---
title: 'I really can't tell you,' answered the jackal. ' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'I really can't tell you,' answered the jackal. ' Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 18, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 18, sentence 129

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'I really can't tell you,' answered the jackal. '

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** not tell, answer · **To what, where:** you, jackal · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3027:18:129
# text = 'I really can't tell you,' answered the jackal. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
10	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	ccomp	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	jackal	jackal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
14	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | can | I |  | you |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent you=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | the jackal |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent jackal=Eventuality |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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